In 2005, anthropologist David R. Braun '98 was digging a trench with some fellow researchers at Koobi Fora, a rich archaeological site in northern Kenya where he spends three months out of the year.  Eight feet below the surface, the team spotted some unusually shaped impressions.“They looked like footprints,” says Braun. They were footprints as it turns out—made about 1.5 million years ago by some of our early human ancestors.

That extraordinary find became major news in February when the journal Science published a study of the prints as its cover story.  Braun, who was one of the co-authors of the study, says the rare footprints have attracted widespread interest because of what they add to our understanding of human evolution.“The earliest hominid footprints are the Laetoli prints which were found in Tanzania and date to 3.5 million years ago,” says  Braun, a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa.“But they don't show an arch like we have. When we walk we hit the ground with our heel, then transfer to the outside of our foot, and then finally to the ball of the foot and push off from there. That distinct human structure doesn't appear in those earlier prints.”

It does in the prints found at Koobi Fora by Braun and his colleagues.“They are so well-preserved you can see individual toes,” he says. Also aiding the team's analysis was a new technique developed by the study's lead author Matthew Bennett, a geologist at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom.“Previously, to capture footprints you had to make a plaster mold, which had the potential to damage the prints,“ says Braun.“But Matt has perfected the use of a mobile laser scanner to scan over the prints with sub-millimeter accuracy.” Based on the digitally captured evidence, the authors of the study attribute the footprints to early Homo erectus-- the first hominid with similar body proportions (longer legs and shorter arms) to modern Homo sapiens.

Braun, whose research focuses on discovering how early humans made and used stone artifacts, first visited Kenya's Koobi Fora as a Haverford student majoring in anthropology at Bryn Mawr.  He was taking courses at the University of Pennsylvania and working with some scholars associated with Penn's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology who suggested he attend the Koobi Fora Field School.   Says Braun,“It was run out of Harvard then, and it was meant to provide an avenue for young people studying paleo-anthropology to get experience in field work and learn about the techniques used.” Now the program, conducted in a remote, rugged place where temperatures soar above 115 degrees part of the year, is run through a collaborative agreement between Rutgers University (where Braun received his Ph.D.) and the National Museum of Kenya.

Braun says he'll be forever grateful to Haverford, whose Presidential Discretionary Fund made that first foray to Africa possible.“The funny thing is,” says Braun.“I went there as a student, and now I actually co-direct the Koobi Fora Field School.”

--Eils Lotozo